Guests Of The Sheik Summary

Elizabeth Warnock Fernea wrote Guests of the Sheik based on her experiences living with her husband in a rural village in Iraq for two years. This book details Fernea's experiences as she assumed the dress and sheltered life of a harem woman while delving into a form of life rarely explored due to its isolation and emphasis on privacy. Fernea, herself, was not an anthropologist, but the Guests of the Sheik can be considered an ethnography that far surpasses the practices of its time. Fernea's desire to belong and live as a harem women allows her to experience and understand a culture far too often judged as oppressive and overly conservative. Fernea seeks to enlighten readers of the rich lives the women of El Nahra maintain, despite their adherence

to the practice of veiling, specifically wearing the abayah. Fernea's personal experiences are supplemented by the guidance, advice, and anecdotes of the women who establish Fernea's new social group and can be considered her informants. The combination of Fernea's unintentional reliance on participant observation, as well is the etic perspectives provided by her new social group, enables Fernea to describe an accurate representation of life in El Nahra, not only for married women like herself, but also for unmarried women, widows, female teachers, and mullahs, who are Muslim religious teachers. By structuring her ethnography based on her personal experiences, Fernea drafts a cohesive and comprehensive understanding of the multidimensional lives of the women of El Nahra.
However, the author's lack of formal training prevents her from using other forms of ethnographic research, such as formal interviews, and asking deep questions surrounding the underlying aspects of the female culture in El Nahra. The downsides of her lack of training, however, is compensated for by the unique approach she takes. Without the hindrance of formal training, Fernea is allowed to experience an seek out the core aspects of culture, such as the institution of marriage and the importance of female relations. Guests of the Sheik should be considered a remarkable representation of an ethnography, one that was particularly ahead of its time, as Ferneas reliance on participant observation and true embodiment of a culture and interest in the lives and activities of women was scarcely researched. Her lack of training may even make her style of writing more entertaining and more accessible because she writes not only for anthropologists but also for the common audience. If the goal of an ethnography is to systematically study, understand, and describe a specific group and their culture, then Fernea has most definitely succeeded.
Guests of the Sheik describes Fernea's two-year stay in a small, rural southern Iraqi village named El Nahra.

This book differs from most ethnographies in that it was not authored by an anthropologist. Fernea originally set out to accompany her husband as he completed research for his doctorate in social anthropology from the University Chicago. Henceforth, Fernea did not enter the field with any specific goals, hypotheses, or particular interests. In many ways, Guests of the Sheik reads as a personal narrative, describing Ferneas struggles integrating into a society that has vastly different expectations and guidelines for women. Fernea recalls the culture shock she first experienced as well as her eagerness to overcome it. Her goals were mainly of a human nature: she wanted to feel a sense of belonging, to have friends, and to establish a life in El Nahra. The first part of Guests of the Sheik largely mimics Fernea's own journey to feeling accepted as it introduces readers to the various groups of women who soon become Fernea's close friends and confidants, most importantly Laila, who will later introduce many aspects of Muslim culture to Fernea. Throughout the book, each chapter emphasizes a different aspect of life as Fernea discovers it, or details an important event. As such, readers experience Ramadan and Eid, two staples of the Muslim culture, Weddings and marriage arrangements, discussions of monogamy and polygamy, the Pilgrimage to Karbala, and many other customs

and traditions. Fernea teaches readers by including her own personal narrative, as well as the anecdotes of her new found friends. Fernea also includes a list of all the significant individual discussed in the book, as well as their relations to each other, and a map of the El Nahra village, detailing the multiple locations Fernea frequently visits. Guests of the Sheik covers the entirety of Fernea and her husband's two-year stay in El Nahra, as well as their departure and an update on life in El Nahra after the revolution, thanks to Fernea's husband's second visit, many years later.
Fernea's desire to uncover the rich cultural aspects of life for women in El Nahra stemmed from a personal belief in universal aspects of humanity. This is revealed after her husband encourages her "to remember that [they] were in El Nahra to do some specific work, not prove any romantic theories about humanity being the same everywhere," after she expressed her disappointment at her troubles making friends (Fernea 77). Fernea, nonetheless, is not satisfied. She addressed this as a challenge and sought to gain the respect and admiration of the women of El Nahra. Eventually, Fernea does gain acceptance largely through her friendship with Sheil Hamid's niece, Laila. This desire for friendship, perhaps surreptitiously, leads to Fernea's realizations surrounding the importance of female friendships in El Nahra.
Her growing friendship with Laila allows Fernea far were access to social events, in which she is able the observe and recognize the level of respect placed on friendship.

Fernea writes, "I discovered, friendships among women were much more important and much more intense in this segregated society than in our own….The women have to depend on each other for company, for support, and for advice" (255). Fernea ascribes the increased importance of female friendship to the segregated nature of El Nahra, where the men spend most of the day away from the women, even their wives. She continues to state, "A man might be a devoted father or brother or a loving husband, but in El Nahra he was seldom, if ever, a companion" (255). Therefore, women turned to each other for companionship. This juxtaposes with Fernea's own perspective because she does consider her husband to be a companion. This revelation of the unique nature of friendships, in which the fidelity and loyalty between friends was a far greater concern that between couples, aids in Fernea's desire to expose multidimensional layers of life for the women of El Nahra. She countered the belief that women could not have meaningful, emotional, and equal relationships with their husbands by revealing women did have such relationships, they just occurred in friendships rather than romantic

relationships.